Big news, Nerds: I officially sent the first query letter for my novel yesterday. It was a pretty good letter, if I may say.

I got my first rejection this morning. So. There’s that.

…Is it weird that I’m actually sort of excited to have gotten that rejection? See, the thing is, it wasn’t a form letter, it wasn’t rude, and the lady was actually…very nice.

She responded in less than twelve hours. She started out saying that she was impressed and that I had clear talent. She told me exactly why she rejected my book. She was nice, and approachable, and her advice is exactly what I needed to hear to further improve my book. I have ideas of where to go.

Eh, not quite, Mr. Asimov…

Here’s my other big news: Now that I’ve started querying, I have two tasks:

Re-re-re-revise my book. Again. This means I need to get the word count up to at least 60,000 words, and maybe start earlier in the story. (I’m currently at 39,000…You get where this is going.)

I CAN FINALLY START WRITING MY NEW BOOK THAT I’VE BEEN PLANNING SINCE, LIKE, LAST AUGUST!!!

Do you know how happy this makes me? I feel like if I don’t start writing again soon, I’m just going to lose the right to call myself a writer.

My concerns with this plan are pretty numerous, though. Namely, the last time I tried anything like this, I ended up hating the first book forever more. But, the thing is, I was at a vastly different point with the first book, and I was starting to kind of hate it anyway. I’m not there with this one that I’m trying to publish. Also, I’m thinking I’m going to alternate which book I work on, so that one day I focus on rewriting, and the next I focus on creating this new one, and so on and so forth.

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3 thoughts on “Queries, Rejections, and the Rebirth”

Well, I’m sorry it didn’t go quite the way you were hoping. But I’m glad she was nice and that you’re feeling okay about everything. And hooray for new books! Best of luck with the writing and rewriting and everything!